Sunday, May 3, 2015

The Adventures of Little Miss Birdy

A few weeks ago I was visiting with my aunt about all things spring including birds. She said every year a bird tries to make its nest inside their garage on their garage door opener. I thought that was interesting because I could only remember just one time a bird flew into our garage as a kid and my dad running around trying to get it out.

Fast forward to last weekend. I’m working in my yard with my garage door wide open. When I was finished with the yard work I walked back into the garage and startled a bird that had accidentally flown inside and is now sitting on top of my open garage door in a complete panic because she believes she’s trapped. Of course there is an opening large enough for two cars to drive through, which is plenty of space for a bird to fly in and out of; but the term “bird brain” didn’t come about because birds are particularly smart creatures. So I got the broom and started waving it around, knocking on things and saying “come on little birdy” all while trying to avoid any bird droppings that were flying through the air. (Bird poo in my hair would pretty much ruin my day.) But Miss Bird kept flying up except there is a ceiling in my garage and she couldn’t get very far so she just kept landing on the highest thing… the open garage door.

After a few unsuccessful minutes of this, I called my mom. (Moms always have the answers to odd questions like this.) She brilliantly suggested that I leave the garage door half up and half down which will create a space at the very top of the garage door opening and then go about my day and wait for the little birdy to fly out on her own. The only problem was I couldn’t get my garage door to stay halfway. It kept going up and down which made Miss Birdy totally panic and she left her spot on the (now moving) garage door and perched on the handlebars of a bicycle hanging on hooks on the wall. In all the commotion she finally saw the opening to the outside would and soared out into wide open spaces. I shut the garage door as fast as I could – I didn’t want her to change her mind and turn around and head back for my garage. (Thankfully she didn’t)

Shortly thereafter I remembered I needed to get the mail. Standing at the mailbox looking back at my garage door I was amazed at how much that little birdy had pooped all over it. Because when it’s up the front of the garage door is facing the ceiling of the garage and that was Miss Bird’s perch of choice. In her frightened state she must have lost control of her bowels.  So I got some soapy water and paper towels and scrubbed bird doo-doo off the front of the door all the while thinking to myself this is not what I planned on doing today. But hey, Miss Bird was free and my garage door was clean and when I told the story to my husband later, he had a good laugh.